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LA Sanitation and Los Angeles International Airport Team Up for Organics Waste Recycling Pilot Project

by on April 25, 2017

As part of ongoing efforts for the City of Los Angeles to achieve the goal of zero waste and reducing the use of landfills, LA Sanitation and Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) have announced the start of an Organics Waste Recycling Pilot Program at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

The pilot program calls for the collection of food waste from: a sit-down restaurant, fast food restaurant, and coffee house in Terminal 8 and an airline lounge in Terminal 7. The program’s effectiveness will be analyzed to determine the needs for all of the 108 food service establishments within LAX’s nine terminals.

Airport staff will collect the food waste from the pilot program locations. LA Sanitation will then collect the food waste and transport it to a facility, where it will be recycled and converted into renewable natural gas and used as fuel. Residual solids and liquids from the process will be made into beneficially reusable products such as soil amendments.

“This partnership with LAWA underscores LA Sanitation’s commitment to environmental sustainability,” said LA Sanitation Director and General Manager Enrique C. Zaldivar. “We continually work to increase the recycling of solid waste and its reuse in a beneficial way; organics processing is the new frontier in solid waste management.”

California Assembly Bill 1826 (AB 1826) requires businesses that generate eight cubic yards of organics waste per week to have an organics recycling service in place. To ensure compliance with AB 1826, the City of Los Angeles adopted the Sustainable City pLAn (Mayoral Directive No. 7) and the Los Angeles City Zero Waste Franchise System (Council Motion 14-1432).